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Social Anxiety

Dear Reader,

I know you shouldn’t diagnose yourself on the internet, but I have never been wrong about a diagnosis I have made about myself in the past. I diagnosed myself with depression before visiting a doctor. I diagnosed myself with dyslexia before being tested and I diagnosed myself with Aspergers before the assessment for that.

So I know that from my panic attacks and my recent avoidance of social situations that my social anxiety, or just my anxiety problems in general have got worse.

There’s a thing called the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, it’s like a test where you rate things moderately to severe. I did a similar test to this the first time I went to the doctors about my depression. On this test I scored 27 / 27 which means that I am severely depressed. So I decided to take the to the social anxiety test, and scored 99. Anything over 90 is considered severe, and a cause for concern. Fantastic! Something else to add to my ever-growing list of afflictions.

I said before, I have always had aspects of social anxiety, I don’t like groups, especially of people I don’t know, I don’t like parties, I don’t like being the center of attention, I don’t particularly enjoy socialising I find it incredibly exhausting, not because I’m not enjoying myself but I am very on edge and awkward and aware of how awkward I am. I don’t like talking to people I don’t really know, I’m not very good at making conversation never mind small talk and I don’t like being watched. The list goes on, and of course the nail in the coffin of this social anxiety is I have Aspergers! Aspergers syndrome is different to regular autism in that language skills and cognitive development aren’t affected. What is effected is social interaction and nonverbal communication. Which, as a “mild” sufferer, I am all too aware of having and all too aware of my lack of social skills. During my Aspergers test I discovered that I’m not really very good at reading people’s emotions. I was told to look at sets of eyes and say what emotion they are expressing, and out of 30 I got 5 correct. I generally thought the people whose eyes were expressing emotions that were positive were negative and because of that I often think people are being negative towards me when they actually aren’t. Apparently I’m not as good at reading people as I thought.

The worst part is that this might not even be just a social anxiety problem, the likely hood is I have developed a general anxiety problem, but as the only things in my life I tend to worry about are leaving my house or talking to people I guess it’s masquerading as a social anxiety problem. But I’m sure my lack of social skills has made my anxiety 10 times worse than it could have been. I guess this is something I need to discuss with my doctor. But now I’m too scared to bring it up in case they think I’m crazy.